


each day you rise with me

by genesis_frog



Series: a vine of ivy's pushing her way through (widobrave week 2020) [7]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (implied polyamory negotiations i should say), Cameos, Domestic, F/M, Getting Together, Living Together, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Canon, the background relationships are veth/yeza and implied caleb/veth/yeza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23178100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genesis_frog/pseuds/genesis_frog
Summary: Veth and Caleb finally talk about it.(widobrave week day 7: post-canon)
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Nott/Caleb Widogast, Veth Brenatto/Caleb Widogast
Series: a vine of ivy's pushing her way through (widobrave week 2020) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666243
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	each day you rise with me

Caleb sat at home, thinking. This behavior was not unusual; he was a thinker before anything else, and often was wrapped up in his own head. Anybody who knew Caleb Widogast would know this about him. This particular instance was notable because, well. Veth had given him a proposition.

But first, we must set the scene.

After everything was over, the Mighty Nein moved to split up -- Jester and Caduceus wanted to go home, as did the Brenattos, and so a somewhat complicated schedule, several very large and somewhat magical homes, and multiple easy means of transport were established so that all seven of the party members and their associates could freely visit one another. This allowed those who were more inclined to wandering, like Fjord and Yasha, the space to do so without ever being too far from home. Caleb had intended to wander, _assumed_ that he would; maybe he would get some books and a wagon and make a traveling library, or maybe he would move to Tal’Dorei and brush elbows with Arcanist Allura Vysoren and her peers. He didn’t want to disrupt Veth’s family or the happily ever after she’d yearned for for years. A human does not fit with a family of halflings, he told himself. Of course, as these things tend to go, he moved to say goodbye and Veth had given him a look and told him, point blank, that she wouldn’t stop him, but he would always have a home with her, and the prospect of acceptance there alone was enough to make him hesitate.

So hesitate he did, and soon enough Caleb found himself living in Felderwin, helping to raise the ceilings of a house just slightly too small for himself, being a cool uncle to Luc and an eager pupil for Yeza. He allowed Luc to use him for target practice (he was scarily good with the crossbow; thankfully, Caleb was very good with Shield and Mage Armor), and he helped with chores around the house, carrying furniture and doing laundry and lighting the stove. In the space in between these tasks, he would sit beside Yeza, listening to him babble about alchemy and explain how the chemical reactions worked -- transmutation without traditional magic was both fascinating and foreign to him. And sometimes, Caleb felt the weight of another pair of eyes trained on him and the hairs on the back of his neck would stand on end, and he would look for a scrying eye and remind himself of the safety of his amulet, and then his gaze would find Veth’s.

She would sit there, her chin in her hands, looking at him ever so softly. He would give her a little smile or a wave, and in response, he would watch a smile bloom across her face like morning glories opening up to the day. An inexplicable warmth flooded through him every time.

In this time, at this moment, Caleb wasn’t doing anything that could be considered useful; rather, he was thinking about Veth’s proposition. See, he’d _heard_ her, that moment before she transformed into Veth and told him he was “the second love of her life”, except he never _asked_ her about it and at the time, he didn’t really want to. That confession was a lot to handle, he could barely admit he loved her as it was, so he filed the information neatly away in his brain somewhere deep behind the boxes that contained his love for Nott the Brave and promptly forgot about it for several years. And, well, she’d never treated him differently, so it was never an issue, or a fact that needed considering. But then she made the proposition, and it went something like this:

It was night, and they were the only two people left awake, after Luc had been tucked in to bed, Yeza long since passed out after a day of focused work. The home, newly adjusted to Caleb’s five feet and ten inches of height, was dark, illuminated only by the firelight and Caleb’s own dim Dancing Lights. He had a novel in his lap, some adventuring story with comedic characters and a frankly unrealistic villain (what kind of monster is called “Quackthulhu” anyway?). Veth, meanwhile, was knitting; she had picked the hobby up, and while not especially good at it, she was usually extremely determined to make something look good. (She generally ended up dropping more stitches than she was knitting, but she was nothing if not stubborn about it.)

Caleb was so absorbed in his book he didn’t hear her knitting needles stop clicking or her soft curses toward fumbled stitches stop, but he certainly heard her say, “Caleb?”

“Yes?” he responded half-mindedly. He turned a page.

“You know I love you,” she told him. He stopped reading and looked up at her.

“Yes, of course.”

“I still consider you the second love of my life,” Veth stated. It was a matter of fact, but it shook him still. “And I don’t mean that you’re second in importance, or anything, I mean you’re the second man that I’ve fallen in love with, and I do love you, romantically.”

A host of forgotten memories came to his mind.

“I… love you too,” he said carefully, taking a breath to keep talking. With a look from Veth, he closed his mouth.

“Let me finish,” she asked, and he waited.

“Caleb, I love you. You’re not only part of my family, you’re one of the three most important people in the world to me, and I want to be able to love you in the way I love Yeza. I already do. I’ve seen you with Luc, you know,” she explained. “You’re wonderful with him. I feel safe when he’s with you. I think you could be a good parent for him -- if you wanted.”

Caleb cleared his throat. He tangled his fingers together, absently weaving invisible strings the way he would Widogast’s Web of Fire. “Have you -- discussed this with, ah, with Yeza?” he asked, or maybe croaked.

“Yes!” Veth interrupted. “Yes, of course, Cay. I talked to him about it a while ago; he’s supportive of me, of whatever I, we, decide to do.”

Caleb paused. “I would be lying if I said I had ever thought of you in the way you are describing before,” he admitted. “I -- I am not sure what to say. Let me think, for a while.”

Veth nodded. “I know. I’ll let you think it over.”

And this, of course, brings us to Caleb, thinking about Veth’s proposition. To be completely fair, he wasn’t entirely sure of what she was asking in the first place. Was she asking him to be her lover, so that she could leave Yeza? Was she asking him to join her in bed with Yeza as well? Was he going to be the homewrecker he had envisioned himself to be? And then, of course: _did Caleb even want this at all?_

But then he would think of yellow flowers outside Felderwin, and the way she smiled and laughed and put them in her hair; the silly gifts she would give of colorful stones and feathers and knotted tangles of yarn that she called hats and scarves, the way her hands looked when she pressed a new book into his own. The mischievous looks she would toss his way, her eyes ever so slightly narrowed and twinkling. The affectionate kisses she would give to Luc, to Yeza, and then to Caleb, and then -- Caleb thinks, Caleb thinks, Caleb thinks.

After a week, he approached her. It was the afternoon; they were hanging laundry on the line together, while Luc ran around with Nugget and Yeza worked on weeding their small herb garden. The air smelled sweet, of flowers and spices. Luc screamed with laughter, and Veth looked up, fond, and she was beautiful.

“I thought about it,” Caleb started abruptly, and Veth looked over to him. She continued to fold a blanket and let him speak. “And I -- I was not lying, when I said I’d never thought about it, about you, in that way, before. But I think I might be willing to try.”

And Veth smiled, and the world stood still.

**Author's Note:**

> (title from "sunlight" by hozier)
> 
> ah, here it is, the end of the week! i have a lot of thoughts about how romantic widobrave could potentially play out in canon at this point in time and its basically caleb realizing "hey i never thought about you this way before, but im liam o'brien and i will 'yes and' this" with a side of "veth has two hands". i did not expect to write this much, but i had a lot to say i guess
> 
> thank you for reading! i loved writing this (it's my favorite from this week!) and so i hope you've enjoyed it too


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